It's a beautiful October morning in my valley.  Perfect for beginning Christmas cards!

I recently  ordered  some of Tim Holtz' Christmas '23, and  created a card

patterned after Barbara Schiassi's beautiful card during the release. Barbara  used

the Halloween moon and Forest  Shadows trees, and I was smitten!

The bright moon's glow on Santa's sleigh and reindeer is my favorite. 

Looks like he's just taking off on his yearly run...

Another of the Tim Holtz' new release is this Christmas tree, all decked out 

with ornaments. 

It's so hard capturing all the glittery goodness on the embossed background  and tree.

Fun to use my Stickles and glitter paper!

It's hard to see, but I first embossed my sentiment (The Greetery) onto heat resistant

acetate, cut around the image before adding it to my card. 

Both cards are 5"x 7"'s to  fit the larger die cuts.

I'm really loving the Sizzix cardstock with the retro images... lots of vintage 

colors too!

Love you to the Core

 

As September passes before our eyes, I'm reminded of those happy days when

the weather changes, leaves put on a show of color and all of us  eat apples.

The Greetery's Caramel Apple Die was in my order from the release, and I've

 been playing with making tags for candy bags. I saved one for a card.

The apple on the card front opens to a message (love the apple script), and becomes

a sweet surprise for the recipient.

All the apple sentiments are included in the Greetery's Fall Foodie Phases.

Ribbon Maker down the center, and Frosted Frame around the edge. the caramel

is GA'd before adding all the nuts and swirly candy.

The apple blossoms are from  Botanicuts Apple.

Such a fun card to make!  

Have a lovely fall week! Well, almost fall...

Hung Up on You

 

Good morning. And another Valentine using The Greetery's new Have a Heart release.

The sweet Hearts at Home Sweater die is surrounded by a pieced heart wreath 

crafted with the Boxwood Heart base, and stamped with Love is stampset.

This card was on it's way to being tossed. It suffered a smudge on the bottom,

and no amount of scrub would remove a red smudge! 

So I did the next best thing, cut it off, and added a scallop edge. The edging is 

the sides of the Ribbon Maker die. Not my favorite, but it worked.

Tiny posies from Botanicuts Wildflower Mix.

A sweet little sweater hung on a heart wreath... Valentines are such fun to make!

Poppystamps Challenge: Me and You

It's the first of the month, and Poppystamps has a new challenge to play! 

I'm one of the designers for this month, and the challenge is to create a card

using the theme, Me and You. Perfect for a Valentine!

I also get to choose a guest to inspire you, and my good friend Colleen Foelker agreed

to be my guest for the month of February. Colleen's card is the beautiful Valentine below.

You can find Colleen's lovely valentine on her blog: One Smile Lifts a Heart, and

and of course on the Poppystanps blog all month. 

My card is also on the Poppystamps blog:

Check out all the details on the Poppystamps blog.

You have all month to play along for a 25. gift certificate!

Thanks, and be sure to visit Colleen and give her some love!

 

The Card Concept: Floral Valentine

 

Floral Valentine is the new challenge at the Card Concept. Here is our photo 

inspiration and color swatches.

I love working with dies and die cuts, and chose A Pocket Full of Love, 

from Spellbinders to create my Clean and Elegant pocket card.

I used the colors, shades of pink, green and black and placed. my main die cut on

a black background. Then pieced the colors.

The pocket die reveals a card with a sentiment.

Such a great inspiration photo for this challenge, so many possibilities. Can't wait to see

what you do with it! 

Play along, and remember to choose a style, one of ours or make up your own.

Have a great week!

The Card Concept #188 {Floral Valentine}

Tag-2 Harvey

 

Have you met Harvey? He's the tiny soldier new to the Tim Holtz Christmas 

release for 2022,  and he's won my heart!

The holidays bring together a group of friends that have met for years to

celebrate a tradition called 'Favorite Things'. There are 8 of us, and we eat, 

drink and are merry in December with gifts that are special to us that we 

share.

Because my 'Favorite Things' include anything paper, I created a set of 25 holiday

tags for each friend. Harvey was die cut and assembled 8 times in his holiday

best, and stands at attention on a white splattered MFT tag.

He's double tagged for names to and from.

The greenery is from an older Tim Holtz set, and dipped in paste before 

sprinkling with snow glitter.

and that's tag 2. If you come back tomorrow, you can see another tag

created for my gal pals. 

Happy Christmas time!

 

Bake It Merry

 

Well, it's full on Christmas Card Creating Time, and I have another card ready made from

the Greetery's new Holiday Release to share.

What's merrier than a tray of just baked Christmas cookies?

Together with pot holders, rolling pin and spatula, I was in love with this set

from the sneak peeks!

All elements were arranged and then sprinkled with chunky glitter.

Don't the letters of the word, 'BAKE' look like iced cookies? Love all Betsy's details; the

woodgrain on the rolling pin, stripes on the potholder, even indents on the cookies.

I found some holiday paper at Hobby Lobby, and, as long as time permits, will make 

coordinating envelopes. Really easy, and quick with a Memory Keepers Punch Board.

Envelope Punch Board by We R Memory Keepers. The Easiest Envelope Maker Available 

I love doing things in assembly line, so I'm all set up to do 8 of these. The Christmas

music is playing, the craft room is completely in shambles, with tiny pieces every-

where, and I'm in my happy place...

It's the most wonderful time of the year...

The Greetery

Bake It Merry Stamp, Bake It Merry Die Set

Windowpane Plaid Background

Cozy Cup Coaster

Birthday Cabin

 

I have a fall card to share today, a birthday card for a friend.

Sitting Pretty is one of my top 10 Greetery sets, and here's why:

This is the view from our family cabin in Shaver Lake. So many of our friends have 

enjoyed this sweet scene with me, among them, the recipient of this card. I hope she 

enjoys the card as much as I did making it.

I love creating scenes like this, with details and layers. The mountains hold a special 

place in my heart. We in California have watched sadly as drought, and forest

mismanagement have led to more and more fires. Our cabin and the neighborhood 

were spared, while others were not. The fire crews assigned to Shaver 

surrounded our village, and diverted the fire around the town and neighboring

homes and cabins. Never have I been so thankful to so many valiant and

devoted men and women! They even texted many of us with pictures of

our property to let us know we were OK.

If you get a chance, there's a fabulous documented video done by Jeff Aielo from 

Facebook's Talk of the Hill, who works for PBS, called:

Afterburn: The Creek Fire Documentary - A Valley PBS Original Documentary

Jeff and his wife gave us daily reports of the fire's growth and devastation. 

They continue to be the voice for those of us who demand action and better

 management of the forests.

The Greetery

Sitting Pretty, Sitting Pretty Accessories Dies

Rustic Wreath Twigs Die

Botanicuts Wheat

Reflections Stamp Set

Curio Autumn Findings

Fall Foliage

Written in Ribbons Stamp Set

 

The Card Concept: Harvest Adventures

 

You've picked a wonderful day for a visit! The Card Concept has a new challenge, and it's 

full of Autumn inspiration!

Colors? Leaves? Truck? Fall Season? Like I said, lots of inspiration.

My style is full of layers, and it's not really clean, so I'm going with 'stamped and layered card'.

Perfectly alright to choose your own style (or make one up!).

I definitely stuck to the color swatches on the inspiration photo.

Here's a closeup of how I arranged some of the Greetery's Botanicuts under the stamped leaf.

Hope to see you in the lineup on the challenge blog, and hope you're enjoying

a wonderful autumn season!

All products used: The Greetery

Harvest Home, Botanicuts: Ginko, Curio Autumn Foliage, 

Rustic Wreath Twigs, Let's Have a Word: Autumn Die.

  The Card Concept #161 {Harvest Adventures}

Daring to Dream: The Card Concept Challenge

 

Well, hello there! And welcome to the Card Concept's newest challenge, 

Daring to Dream.

Confession time... I had the hardest time with this photo. Why? Too masculine?

Muted colors? No flowers? I finally decided to focus on the globes, (always

loved globes!) and design my own way! That's a hint for you too, folks. Do

what you love, create your own way! 

And, I rather like the results! 

On water color paper, I smooshed color onto the surface with a stamp block.

It took 3 tries, and this is the one I liked best.

Glorious Globes from PTI haven't seen ink in a while, and I love the sizes in the set.

Simple stamping, and a few pop ups for the books and globes.

In case you can't read it, the sentiment says: 'You will change the world.'

The card is for a brilliant DIL/Geography teacher, who is truly on a path to

change with education. 

Play along for two weeks, and remember to add our challenge photo and

pick a style. Choose one of ours or design one of your own.

By the way, mine is Mixed Media (watercolors and inks) and Clean and Layered.

Products used:

PTI: Glorious Globes

The Greetery: All Blessings Flow (greenery sprigs), Crimped Frame Die.

All Altenew Inks

Tim Holtz watercolor card stock

Keeping Christmas: September

 

Hello and welcome to Keeping Christmas September, a blog hop of 

holiday cards and projects to inspire you to get going on your

greeting cards!

I have a trio of cards today, so let's take a look.

There's a list of designer friends at the end of this post, so you

can hop along.

It's been a while since I've used Betsy's Make It Market: 

Fairy Tale Christmas.

The year it was released, I must have made a dozen cards. She included 

designer papers with the kit, along with stamps, dies, cutouts, stencils, 

even elements to create fairy tale books and projects that light up! For my cards today, I used the enclosed 

stencils, stamps and die cut outs.

The corner dies are the sweetest! I set up an assembly line and turned up

 the Christmas music (Pandora) on the computer. 

3 cards with the same layout moves along quickly, and is a wonderfully

relaxing way to spend a day in the craft room!

Slight differences like color variation on the holly, and where the 

side sprigs were placed were really the only differences.

And... matching envelopes, something I'm trying to do with all the cards I 

make. Makes it so easy when they're ready to send.

I usually send out Christmas cards on or around the 10th of December. 

How are you doing with your holiday card making? No pressure, but, 

only 2 more months of keeping Christmas inspiration.

Speaking of inspiration, check out what the other designers have for you!

Kelly Lunceford (Creator)

 Claire Broadwater

 Lori Tecler

 Nance Salkeld

 Nina Forsyth

 Nancy Guse

 Marybeth Lopez

 Nancy Penir

 Carol Hintermeier